Has anyone ever used Okeydokey tours with Charlie Soto

[joeyhipps]

We have been to Costa Rica on two separate week+ long vacations so we were EXCITED we had a stop at Puerto Limon on Carnival Freedom. We have done lots of GREAT activities in CR, but we only had one day to show our parents and another family we traveled with how great CR is! After days of research on day-tours from the port, we found many nice reviews here and on Cruisecritic.com about OkeyDokey Tours Costa Rica. We booked in February for June 8, and reconfirmed the exact itinerary with Charlie the week before the tour.

 

We signed up for: Tour A-2, lasting from 10am till 5:30 pm (the entire time in port), with the following from the exact email from Charlie:

"Yes i really recommend you the A-2 tour for your family of 10 people, Full air conditoned van , private & personalized tour, and this is an description...

1) Bananas plantation to show them the process,

2) monkey place,

3) the wonderful tortuguero canal river cruise to enjoy the nature beauty, 3 ecosistems: mangrove, rainforest & beach , wild life: lizards, iguanas, crocs, monkeys, sloths, & exotics birds,

4) Jungle Breeze canopy & rainforest to do the zip line , 13 plattforms, this is the best zip line here, in Limon,

5) Bonita beach, lunch, and city for coffee, vanilla souvenirs, ....

=$109 p.p. but w the special discount for c.critic members you can pay only $89 p.p. include fresh fruits, refreshments & thipycal or snack lunch , at the Jungle breeze some of the people can do the zip line while others can do the rainforest walk , without zip line only $59 p.p.

 

We booked. We were met on time, and taken in a private van (with very little air conditioning... not a big deal.) We were told immediately there would be no time for lunch since we were doing so much... (OK, we can skip that if given fruit and drinks...).

Stops:

1) Fruit stand, which was very interesting as we tasted lots of different fresh fruits following our guide Harrison as he casually told us about the fruits.

2) Zip line - Instead of Jungle Breeze as told, we went to Rancho Cedar Valley. Because they had so many people, we waited 2 1/2 hours to get our equipment. (We were told Carnival had booked Jungle Breeze with no more room for private tour groups.) This is not an exageration... we saw MANY others leave mad. Our guide told us that there was still plenty of time for everything else-"no worries." Once we got to the first platform, there was another 45 minute wait! There were only 6 ziplines instead of the 13 promised with Jungle Breeze - so the actual ziplining took about 30 minutes.

** My parents were going to do the rainforest canopy walk as they are older, but at this location, there is not a canopy walk, so they sat for the entire 3+ hours.

3) Banana Plantation! A stop on the side of the road where (looking around as if we were trespassing) Harrison showed us bananas growing and talked about them for 5 minutes... No actual Del Monte workers etc. and there was a sign that had "no visitors" right next to where we stopped!

4)Tortuguero Canal Tour - this was actually interesting, knowing the wildlife cannot be promised... took about 1 hour start to finish. We did see some monkeys, a sloth, and some iguanas.

5) No more time - back to the boat!

 

NO discount for what we didn't get to do: the actual banana factory tour, the monkey place, Bonita Beach with lunch, OR the fact that my parents didn't get to do anything while we waited in line/ziplined for 3+ hours.

 

DO NOT book this tour as they promised more than they could deliver, but charged us the same amount.

 

** Note: We have been on the Original Canopy Tour in Monteverde twice - it is truly the best and safest! They have a new location near Puerto Limon, but Charlie/OkeyDokey told us there was not enough time to go there from the ship's port.... if you can, definitely go to the ORIGINAL CANOPY TOUR.

[Appygirl]

Joey - I'm sorry to hear your day in Costa Rica wasn't what you had expected it to be.

 

I think we were on that same van with the iffy air conditioning!

 

A lot of people seem to forget that we're travelling in 3rd world countries and transportation, customer service, language barriers, communication breakdowns, sense of urgency, etc is not the same as what we can expect back home.

 

We thought about doing the zip line but because ours was not the only cruise ship in dock I figured it was possible that there would be a lot of people and a lot of waiting around because only one person can be on a line at a time. I've done zip lining at home anyway so we skipped and did the canal tour instead. I think many zip liners don't consider the possibility that a few hundred others may be interested in the same activity in the few hours they're in port.

 

I was momentarily surprised by the "plantation" on our tour. What I consider a plantation and what Costa Ricans consider a plantation is miles apart. As you discovered, their definition of a plantation is a roadside stand on a couple of acres. Charlie's description that you copied and pasted says a banana plantation. You say you were expecting a tour of a banana factory.

 

I think you should have been refunded the cost of your lunch but that should have been negotiated at the end of the tour. I doubt Charlie will offer you any refund now. If its any consolation the lunch was $4 so its not like you lost a huge amount of money but times 10 people that's $40. I hope you only paid the $89 each or rounded up to $90 and didn't leave anything extra as a tip. The guide is responsible for paying the lunch for the group. You can be pretty sure that $4 each for the missed lunch stayed in his pocket and that or rounded up to $5 if you paid $90 would have been a sufficient tip because your day didn't go exactly as planned due to the zip line waits.

[marshalljm]

Just got back from Cost Rica on the Freedom. OkeyDokey was awesome!! Met us outside the port gates, made sure they had our name and the number in our party. Our guide was Carlos - super nice man!! Took us on a boat tour and saw lizards, monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, birds, it was incredible. Then to the Del Monte banana plantation for the tour. Stopped along the side of the road to take pictures with a sloth that a kid had as a pet, unforgettable. Ziplining at Rancho Cedar Valley was the best part. Lots of people had booked this so we spent a lot of time here, but it was worth it to fly through the air over the rain forest and river. Didn't have much time for shopping, stopped at a grocery store to buy some coffee, but it didn't look like there was a lot to see. FYI, bring snacks we didn't stop for lunch and were starving after eating 12 times a day on the ship.